David L. Atkinson's Blog, page 14

Poetry Thursday 265 - Steps in May

At the moment my mind is filled with politics and although some say it is a boring topic, I find it emotional and not necessarily in a positive way. I visit my grandson every week and have watched his progress in learning to walk and never cease to be amazed at the leap from the first tottering steps to running flat out everywhere he goes.
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Steps
At first unsure, unrelated progress,tottering, trotting on to success.Then capable of pace and varyingthe advances, personal preference allowing.At last set free by learning and experience,each step chosen with specific consequence.Assuredly stepping through life without care,of errors from over-confidence you should beware.Trips and falls interrupt progression,as unexpected external factors induce transgression.Deviation from the expected hoped for route,cause consternation in collaborator’s who are astute.Years of use of which most are successful,undermine confidence and make one doubtful.Aids may be required to overcome infirmity,as age robs joints and muscles of mobility.In the end unsure of the ability to make progress,you sit in a chair and feel hopeless.©David L Atkinson May 2017


May
If you could fly above the street,and take in the passing scene,watch from above as people meet,and view the places they had been.
How would you help and show you care,to the people passing on their way,would you listen to what was unfair,or continue, aloof, above, as you May?
Can you put yourself in others’ shoes?In what way can you support their path?How will you dispel their daily blues,call an election and withstand their wrath. ©David L Atkinson May 2017

Make of them what you will.
God Bless

Writing - Stories change thinking

When I write a story the aim is to entertain but like many perceptions it is the perceiver that responds to what has been written, not the writer.

[image error]David Mitchell - author
David Mitchell  is an English novelist. He has written seven novels, two of which, number9dream and Cloud Atlas, were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He also has a child that has a degree of autism.
[image error]Naoki Higashida
You’ve never read a book like The Reason I Jump. Written by Naoki Higashida, a very smart, very self-aware, and very charming thirteen-year-old boy with autism, it is a one-of-a-kind memoir that demonstrates how an autistic mind thinks, feels, perceives, and responds in ways few of us can imagine. Parents and family members who never thought they could get inside the head of their autistic loved one at last have a way to break through to the curious, subtle, and complex life within.
Mitchell tells us that he has totally changed the way he thinks of his son as a result of reading this book.
In fact when we write we express our thoughts in the way we create our stories which may well resonate with our readers in ways we don't expect.On the other hand you may produce a story that is intended to have such an effect but you still have no control over how it will be received.

Steele has to travel back to Japan to justify recent behaviours that may have revealed his connection with the Gurentai. He is given a task to complete that finds him on the ill-fated Flight MH370 in Kuala Lumpur. Hours later he awakens in a cell in a place and country of which he has no knowledge. 
Being the resourceful man he is, Steele manages to escape and travels north meeting up with his fiancée Naomi Kobayashi in Astana the capital of Kazakhstan. Steele is naturally curious about the fate of the other 238 passengers from the plane which drives him onward to investigate further. He discovers that there are links between Russian organised crime and a Muslim group which stirs fears in his mind regarding the fate of MH370. This causes him to go to the Venice of the North, St Petersburg, where he finds the leader of the Russian mafia and a link with the Muslim pilots of the plane. All does not go well however, and Steele and Kobayashi are captured by their mafia enemy and incarcerated in MH370 on the way to the target that Steele suspected all along - in London.Can Steele extricate himself from this seemingly hopeless situation? Has Steele convinced the Gurentai that he is trustworthy enough to deserve their support?Will Steele manage to deflect the missile in which he is incarcerated from killing thousands in London?This story is a speculative journey based upon the data and misinformation surrounding the loss of Malaysian Flight 370 in March 2014.
Flight into Secrecy
When I wrote this story my underlying aim was to shake the readers perception of our establishment in the West.
God Bless

Tuesday Food Blog - Bangers and mash

Continuing a more homely, and therefore less 'cheffy' theme, I splashed the boat out the other day and bought dome Cumberland sausage.

Bangers and mash
There are no secrets to this meal and every opportunity to enhance the flavours that are there.
Recipe
3 sausagesA handful of new potatoesFrozen peasGravy browning1 onion, choppedsalt and pepper
Method
Fry off the onion and cook the sausages in the same pan. While the sausages are cooking slowly boil the potatoes with a little salt. Throw a handful of frozen peas into boiling water for 5 minutes towards the end of the process.Make half a pint of gravy and put half of the onions into the gravy. Keep warm until required.Drain and mash the potatoes with butter and your preferred taste enhancers. I stuck to the butter, a little milk, salt and pepper, but in fact you could add a teaspoonful of English mustard which goes well with sausage.
This is a very filling meal but wholly satisfying.
God Bless

Writing - Happily Never After

Take a story, or a real event and then challenge yourself to produce a different outcome. That could be some inspirational exercise. Len Deighton produced an example.

[image error]SS-GB
It’s 1941, the Luftwaffe have defeated the RAF in the Battle of Britain, and Hitler’s Wehrmacht have conquered Southern England. Winston Churchill has been executed, King George VI has been imprisoned in the Tower of London, and Swastika banners adorn the bombed out ruins of Buckingham Palace. Tyranny has triumphed. The Nazis have won.What a premise to begin writing with but just imagine the wealth of material. In fact Roald Dahl tested the waters in his poetry Revolting Rhymes and, as he would, came up with some great interpretations.  
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This a collection of Roald Dahl poems published in 1982. A parody of traditional folk tales in verse, Dahl gives a re-interpretation of six well-known fairy tales, featuring surprise endings in place of the traditional happily-ever-after finishes.
Three Little Pigs ... If strolling through the woods one day,
Right there in front of you you saw
A pig who'd built his house of STRAW?
The Wolf who saw it licked his lips,
And said, "That pig has had his chips."
"Little pig, little pig, let me come in!"
"No, no, by the hairs on my chinny-chin-chin!"
"Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in!"

The little pig began to pray,
But Wolfie blew his house away.
He shouted, "Bacon, pork and ham!
Oh, what a lucky Wolf I am!"
And though he ate the pig quite fast,
He carefully kept the tail till last. ... 
I have deliberately avoided spoiling the rhyme in the lines I have chosen to give you a taster.So what is there available for you?
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Being purely subjective if I was to pick an event it might well be the incident at Rourke's Drift in South Africa in the 19th century. In that conflict a handful of men kept the whole Zulu nation at bay. Perhaps if the indigenous peoples had triumphed we may have never had a white dominated country that was guilty of apartheid and other crimes against humanity.
On a lighter note, a Harry Potter world ruled over by Lord Voldemort or perhaps an unsuccessful Shrek who never married Princess Fiona! In each case the world's would be very different. The bottom line - it's all imagination.
God Bless

Writing - Our world this morning

The situation in Manchester following the bombing that followed the Ariana Grande concert, is on-going. There are still significant numbers in hospital, there have been alarms in different parts of the city and the critical level of the security situation is continuing.


As I write the Queen is visiting a hospital in Manchester. She is 91 and has led a sheltered, privileged life but she has also presided over too many of this type of event.
My heart goes out to the families of those who have died for they will truly live a life sentence till the end of their lives. Some of those parents will be quite young and have to adjust and carry on - somehow. Those 125 who have had physical injuries treated in hospital will have lives influenced by this one event. Then there is the remaining 19000+ people who attended the concert and escaped physical hurt, psychologically many people may well have their own nightmares to come.
One act has caused so much continued suffering, give a thought for all involved.
Emergency services
I haven't mentioned the traumas that the people of the emergency services would have found when they arrived at the Manchester Arena. These wonderful people face horrors in the aftermath of such an incident and thankfully, I don't know how, they cope. God Bless every one of them.
Blabbermouths
One piece of connected news that broke this morning was the revealing of the fact that an USA intelligence organisation have leaked information shared by Manchester police. In an effort to catch such criminals and break their organisations we share info with the US. It was leaked to the US media. Unbelievable!
As a writer I believe that this blog is necessary to waken the conscience of that nation.
Over the years, working in Yorkshire I have known many followers of Islam. I loved teaching their children and was often a recipient of their innate generosity. Many of the Muslims that I worked with and played cricket with were from Pakistan and as such have had little involvement in any of the terrorist attacks. I would make a plea that the media stop bracketing the criminals according to religion but rather according to nationality. After all many were killed in the troubles in Ireland over the last 600 years and that was by Christian on Christian!
The atrocity perpetrated on Monday night was by and Englishman of Libyan heritage.
God Bless

Poetry Thursday 264 - Manchester 2017

A momentous week after the bombing at the Manchester Arena. My heart goes out to the families of those who died and to those who will have the scars for the rest of their lives.


Manchester
Music, celebrity worship and dance,dashed before the alter of ignominy,young people dead before they had chance,to form opinions of their own, peacefully.
Lives snuffed out by a concussive blow,carried out in misguided doctrine,the perp himself, also laid low,by malevolent teachings and blinded abnegation.
The best we can hope is to learn good refrain,of optimum lives and from the dove,to support each other and walk again,in mutual regard and everlasting love.©David L Atkinson May 2017

Words are inadequate in such situations however well intended.
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Saint
A handsome man with minimal talent,who achieved his best in his charm,as Ivanhoe, and Simon Templar gallant,rescuing the damsels for his arm.
007 the archetypal consummate hero,travelling the world to achieve his success,at war with the villains of Fleming’s biro,culminating in violence completed sans distress.
A gentle entertainer with heart of gold,representing the UN on children’s needs,taken from us with an illness of the old,but remembered for countless heroic deeds.©David L Atkinson May 2017



God Bless

Writing - A present from history

I wonder how many children have been given a diary for a birthday or Christmas? I remember lots of girls having cloth bound diaries with small locks and tiny keys that boys were always trying to 'borrow' so that they could read the secrets within the little books. All good clean fun.

[image error]Anne Frank
On June 12th 1942 Anne woke in Amsterdam and dashed to see her birthday presents. She was 13 years old and living in occupied Holland. A month later the family were forced into hiding and she recorded the whole story in her diary. In fact she kept the diary going until August 1944. The following spring she died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen.
Even in death getting published was hard and it wasn't until it was translated into English and printed with the title of The Diary of a Young Girl. It has now been published and translated into 60 languages.
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Some years before Anne Frank, in the Regency period in Britain (1811 - 1820), there were a number of rebellious occurrences that were recorded in a variety of forms. There were secret letters and newspaper research that became sources of information during this rebellious period. 
There were at least six instances of insurrection and civil disobedience during those turbulent few years.
Luddites 1811 - 1816
Gangs of weavers across the Midlands and the North feared the growth of automation and the subsequent loss of jobs. They wrecked equipment in several factories.
Government hijacking plot
In November and December 1816 meetings were held in London's Spa Fields demanding political reform of the Prince Regent. There was arson and violence as  group marched towards the Bank of England.
Blanketeers 1817
In March around 5000 unemployed weavers known as blanketeers because they carried blankets, attempted to march from Manchester to London to petition the Prince Regent for food. They were dispersed by the army at Stockport and several were arrested.
Peterloo Massacre 1819
In August of this year a peaceful crowd attending a Manchester rally to call for political reform was broken up by Yeomanry and Army cavalry. At least 18 people lost their lives and hundreds more were injured.
Assassinate the Cabinet 1820
In February 1820 Arthur Thistlewood and a small band of followers plotted to assassinate the cabinet. They were caught near the Edgeware Road, Five were hanged then beheaded and the remaining five were transported.
The Great Reform Act 1832
It was a little later but this act was introduced to bring about some governmental changes, principally abolishing rotten boroughs and giving parliamentary representation to new industrial cities.
In one sense the way in which we collect information has changed little in the last two hundred years. This was demonstrated last night following the bombing at Manchester Arena during which at least 22 people died and 59 were injured. The initial information came from eye witness accounts and smartphone videos. Much has already been written but the final accounts will be a conglomeration of the myriad of snippets both written and electronic which should eventually attain 100% accuracy.
God Bless

Tuesday Food Blog - Chard and more

I consider myself a very fortunate person. I have friends who grow their own vegetables and in their generosity receive handouts. This year it was courgettes, onions, sprout tops and leeks, and all were beautiful and had that indescribable freshness. This next growing season it could be chard.

[image error]Chard
Chard is a leafy green vegetable often used in Mediterranean cooking. In the Flavescens-Group-cultivars, the leaf stalks are large and are often prepared separately from the leaf blade. The leaf blade can be green or reddish in color; the leaf stalks also vary in color, usually white, yellow, or red. Chard has highly nutritious leaves making it a popular addition to healthful diets (like other green leafy vegetables).
Recipe
Melt butter and oil in heavy large pan over medium-low heat. Add garlic and crushed red pepper.Sauté until fragrant, about 1 minute.Add swiss chard; stir to coat.Cover and cook until tender (stirring occasionally) about 8 minutes.Squeeze juice from 1/2 lemon onto chard.Season to taste with salt.
A note of warning - the stalks take longer than the leaves to cook. Almost without exception recipes I've researched suggest 8 minutes for the stalks and half that time for the leaves.
There are a variety ways of using chard including tzatziki, with salmon and other fish, and in pasta and salad dishes.
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The vegetable is rich in vitamins, K, A and C and has anti-inflammatory properties.
So given a few weeks I could be benefiting from a vegetable I haven't used before and grown on my own doorstep.
God Bless

Writing - Liars, liars

There have been literary scandals throughout the ages - Shakespeare for example, was it him or Bacon or someone else that wrote this play or that - or the Hitler Diaries? Well there are modern scandals as well.

[image error]J T Leroy
J T LeRoy
JT LeRoy was the nom de plume of Laura Albert, a 35-year-old Brooklyn author who, around the year 2000, wrote several books, short stories and articles that became hugely popular for their uncompromising accounts of the lives of an underclass of drug addicts, truck drivers and prostitutes in the American South.Albert fabricated an exotic identity for LeRoy, who his followers believed was a transgender, HIV positive, teenage prostitute pimped by his mother in the truck stops of West Virginia.
As 'his' novels grew in popularity and he gained cult status, Albert asked her sister-in-law to start making appearances as LeRoy in disguise.
Albert and a team of co-conspirators managed to sustain the illusion for several years. The truth was eventually revealed by Stephen Beachy in a 2005 article in New York Magazine. In 2007 Albert was found guilty of fraud for signing the contract for the movie adaptation of one of the novels she wrote as LeRoy under a false name.


[image error]Jean Shepherd
I, Libertine
Possibly the most overt critique of the system of literary PR and reviewing, New York radio personality Jean Shepherd’s prank began in 1956 on his late night New York radio show.Frustrated by a system that valued requests for forthcoming books in bookstores as highly as actual sales, he wanted to demonstrate how a sensation could be produced artificially.
“What do you say tomorrow morning each one of us walk into a bookstore and ask for a book each of us knows doesn’t exist?” he asked his listeners.
The response was overwhelming. Ideas for the title were phoned in and Shepherd settled on I, Libertine.
Faced with a barrage of requests, baffled booksellers sent questions up the food chain and soon demand for the phony novel saw it placed on the New York Times bestseller list.
The prank was eventually revealed by the Wall Street Journal but not before the publisher Ian Ballantine, of Ballantine Books, had commissioned a new title of the same name to capitalise on the craze. The proceeds were given to charity.


[image error]James Macpherson
The Tales of Ossian
In 1762 James Macpherson published Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books, together with Several Other Poems composed by Ossian, the Son of Fingal, translated from the Gaelic Language, purporting to be a modern translation of the work of a third-century Gaelic poet.The subsequent influence of Ossian’s ‘work’ can’t be overstated: some argue Macpherson’s were the founding texts of the European Romantic Movement, inspiring writers like Goethe, who translated in into German. Napoleon is said to have carried a copy of Ossian into battle, and in Britain Matthew Arnold, William Blake, Walter Scott and Elizabeth Barrett Browning sang its praises.
Unfortunately, when challenged, Macpherson was unable to present the source texts he claimed to have in his possession. Some dismissed him as a fantasist, but to others the work - even if only an amalgam - should be appreciated in its own right, or as an early example of oral history.

What are these scams other than attempts to improve sales? So what have the perpetrators done? They have identified an opportunity, or cause, and gone for it big style using considerable publicity. So they had to have the bottle to take that leap, risk, and in doing so have convinced a section of literary society that they are telling the truth. In some ways writers are prodigious liars. What else do we do but make up tall stories!

God Bless

Poetry Thursday 263 - So you think you can speak English

An English poetry blog today. Glorify in the beauty of our language but how good are you at reading it aloud?


[image error]Gerard Nolst Trenite
The Chaos

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!
It is a real exercise in concentration.


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Why is it so that when all is well
 
something incurs inexplicably rude
 
to plunge ones good feelings to the depths of hell
 
negating all that was good?
 
 
 
The prize-winning sense of euphoria
 
has you floating in the glorious firmament
 
but lurking in the background is a plethora
 
of pitfalls preparing disappointment.
 
 
 
Is it wrong to expect good things
 
to happen making your world glow
 
and not to worry that something
 
will come along to interrupt the happy flow?
 
 
 
Or should we perhaps be grateful
 
and identify what is beneficial
 
that makes our lives more meaningful
 
and outshines the superficial?
 
©David L Atkinson May 2014 


God Bless